12 May 2010

The Beginning of the End.

a. A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point. b. An unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.

A sudden change in the course of a disease or fever, toward either improvement or deterioration.

An emotionally stressful event or traumatic change in a person's life.

A point in a story or drama when a conflict reaches its highest tension and must be resolved.

Lately, it seems no matter where you turn, the world seems to be in a constant state of crisis, whether it is political, social, cultural, environmental, financial, or plain superficial (oh no! brangelina got divorced?! how will there 80283 children survive?!) the list is endless. In fact, it really does feel like that in my short but esoteric 20 to 30smth years of life, at least half of those years, the powers that be have been informing me we are constantly on the verge of a disaster of epic proportions. Take away the crisis, and it is not a long shot to say the world would probably be sent into the depths of social unrest and panic (aka crisis). In fact, I think you could type ANY word into google + 'crisis', and you're bound to find some sort of world ending catastrophe happened in the last 5 years. Case in point, lets take this banana I am eating this morning. The words banana + crisis turns up a myriad of search results, most notability, the possibility of bananas going extinct...(whoa! first tigers, honey bees, polar bears, and now bananas? good job world)

Now you may still think I am being somewhat over-dramatic, but let's just take a gander at this past few days, weeks, months or years! Whatever. hmmmm....where to start! It's like being a kid in a candy shop! Let's start with the obvious candidate, & in my (not so) humble opinion, the unmistakable reason for LKF's poor showing this past weekend; The 1000 point crash in the stock market this past Thursday, coupled with the ongoing Greek & EU dance of the debt, sent the finance hubs & dubs of the world into a dizzying frenzy! And while there are many suspected reasons, it was enough to send many bankers, brokers, analysts, consultants, and whatnots into significant emotional turmoil, so much so, that you know come Friday night, instead of lushing it up at Wagyu, they were, in fact, crying on their couch, drinking away their pain till it don't hurt no more.

And perhaps you may feel like when it comes to money, anything involving a loss will always be a 'crisis' - but (insert Yoda voice here) let I tell you, young padawan, crisis, stop not there!

Come Friday, there was also Britain's first hung Parliament in 36 years! Another reason for panic! Again sending the financial markets into a state of further frenzy, and causing the dear queen mother to roll over in her grave. And it's not only in Europe, but the Thais too seem to be in the midst of dealing with their own political crisis, along with nearly every African nation since the past decade. Only difference being, we just don't talk about those crises, because let's face it, who cares about Africa. Except for the diamonds. As long as there is no 'shortage of diamonds' crisis, we can sleep soundly at night, human rights? Oh that stuff. There is no crisis of human rights in Africa! Are you kidding? Those kids LOVE being blown up in mines! It's a like a game of hide and go boom!

So let's see recap...financial crisis, check. political crisis, check. What's left...oh yes, environmental! My personal favourite aka the one form of crisis with no hope.

Fact: our environment, has been in a state of crisis since the 1970s. Of course, no one really talked about it - since until very recently, as we couldn't make any money out of it, which is incidentally why it has been dubbed 'the crisis with no hope'. Unfortunately for us, this form of crisis has now emerged from the 'crisis' state, and majestically transformed into a 'oh shit, we really screwed up the planet' state. In this flavour of crisis, there are myriads of forms of environmental disaster, from the recent truly catastrophic gulf oil spill (still with no resolution) to angry volcanoes starting 3 in 1 Nazi-Marxist reminiscent asholocalypses, to world wide water shortages, to food shortages, to the constant diminishing global bio-diversity, to the fact that we will probably have no more fish, come 2050...even Facebook and its users can't seem to resist the crisis.

We've even developed various levels of penis crises, here, here, & here.

And these examples are mostly headlines and events of the past month, forget years! (well, except for the penis ones perhaps, but let's face it, those are everlasting)

Remember the financial crisis of 2010? oh wait, that's the one we're going through now... I mean 09? Oh wait...08? Wait I mean..07? Oh wait no...that's all the same crisis..the past three years...but before that..oh wait..what about...03? Oh wait..that was the cause of 07-10s crisis...but before that surely we were in good looks...Oh wait....how could we forget 97 through till 99? ...oh wait...so basically I mean...every f*@king 4 years!?!?!?!?! For the last 1.5 decades aka about half of my life. There, we've now come full circle.

And yes, you may say, "well yes these points are all in fact true, but that us ever resourceful villagers have a knack of turning crisis into opportunity", that we are above it all, let's just take a real hard look within...save for the few truly big crises...like the 97 Asian market crash, or the dot com collapse of 2000, the SARS epidemic triggering the 2003 high unemployment rates, or the bird flu in 2004, or the current global recession in 2008...oh wait....crap.....

And that's not even the whole picture! Aside from all these more tangible forms of crisis, us villagers have our own personal ongoing crises - of cultural identity, personal identity, freedom of press, right to universal suffrage (what happened to my 2007 Chief Executive vote and my 2008 LEGCO vote?! hmmmmm) and and let's not forget our omnipresent, unforgettable, ever worsening 'we're going to choke ourselves to death with all this air pollution' crisis...!

So Libertines, have I sent you into a frenzy yet? Are you now convinced the world will, in fact, end in 2012? Have these brazen accumulations of crises convinced to give up on building your once well planned dream life and following your true life passion of becoming a world travelling, renegade ocean rower. The truth of the matter is, in this day and age, 'crisis' is essentially business as usual. So much so, that it seems to be the defining word of our modern-day society. We are a society that thrives on crisis, and honestly, if the world keeps on going the way we're going, we're all going to be f*cked. Actually, I take that back, in my opinion, we ALREADY are fucked. There. I said it. Let's all try saying it together, shall we? We've screwed up so badly, we have now in a perpetual state of crisis. Of course, what can be defined as a crisis varies, and since reality is relative, it all really boils down to a matter of perspective.

However, that said, it is clear to see that as a species we've quite simply let the darker side of our nature dominate our global affairs for way too long. And now, every day there are multiple crises of varying nature in every corner of the world. You'd think after 100's of years of evolution and apparent wisdom & gaining of knowledge, we'd have figured out how to live peacefully sans crisis, but I understand, the human race is, in fact quite slow, and it takes time for us to pick up the simpler things in life, the older we get, like SHARING.

As a parting note, part of the definition given above for 'crisis' states: 'a turning point'. or 'where a conflict reaches its highest tension & must be resolved', so here is my question to you Libertines: when is this point coming? Where is this resolution? What are YOU doing to help solve these neverending doomsdays? And I mean that in the most earnest way possible. Truly. For the last 15 years of my life, all I've seen are temporary solutions, bailouts and patches. It seems to me the more crises we save ourselves from, the more crises we eventually end up in, and usually we're worse off than we were in the first place. ENOUGH I SAY! The time for change is now! THE POWER OF CHRIST COMPELS YOU, *ahem*. Maybe the only way to get out of this self perpetuating cycle is to finally, once and for all, let the ball drop and let the world plunge into the throngs of crisis, because no matter how many times we save ourselves - we never seem to learn our lesson, and have been known to have a history of fucking up. So to my fellow liberated miscreants, I raise my pint to us and bid you; do your part to save the world & let the anarchy begin!!!! RAWR!

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At the Libertines Pub, Hong Kong, you're invited to think otherwise. We are a bunch of rascals who got fed up with the herd mentality and would like to see you having the courage to think for yourself. Our sole objective is the liberation of your thinking through provocative, sometimes irritating, ridicule.